What happened to DVD burning quality?? Forgotten???

[rdgrimes]

And when two discs can look the same and K-Probe, and perform COMPLETELY different

I have not seen anything like this.

[RJW]

I have seen the effect which Dolphinius_Rex is talking about.
However I have seen it only twice that a disc with a low error rate in K-probe showed playback problems. Still the disc was measured on a 401S and I still believe that a real 411S seems to do better as the first 401S drives. (At least the models in my neighbourhood do.)
I wil have to check which disc it was.

Now these were 2 disc's a long with the disc's that don't show a reason why they shouldn't work in a X-BOX samsung drive. It makes me have my doubts that we can say a disc is good or bad just based on K-probe. If then some sources say it isn't and come with a very good explanation what might be wrong then I think that it doens't do it.
Now based on the info from different sources it looks like everything can be brought back if we need Tracking and HF-signal info.
Which K-probe can not give us at the moment. And for me that's the reason why I say K-probe isn't good enough.

What I can say is that for the 411S itself K-probe does represent it's reading ability quite good. In most cases the software matches
the performance given by the drive. For the 401S and modded 401S to 411S it looks to be worse.

So what are we going to do next !
Since rd_grimes and OC-FREAK can not proof it works or not and my info is mostly based on info I got third parties. We can continue this discussion forever. Like I said befor.
rd_grimes and OC-FREAK can proof that the behaviour matches there Lite On DVD drives reading behaviour and I can use the proof of the non working X-Box disc's and some other proof of the magazines and the experience Rex and I have seen.
So it can continue as long till there are no DVD's burned on this planet.
Unless we can meassure something with some better equipement that is.

So what we need is some results from profesional Analyzers. GEEZ We all know that will some people say. But how do we get some disc's measured on such device ? Well 3 Options here.

A Get ourself a Analyzer. A little bit to expensive I think. Specially if it shows K-probe works excellent. Which I don't think but you never know

So this one will be not a option I think ! So we're stuck ? Nope !

B Knock on the door of Audiodev/Datarius or someone else with a profesional analyzer that gives us HF signal and tracking info to proof what we want. However I think they wouldn't do this for free.

This one can turn out quite expensive. Still it's a option which could be possible.

C Knock on the door from some magazine and convince them to do the test with a little help and advise from our side to make sure that everything goes right and it is tested in the correct way.

Now our best change is C I think. So I'm going to try and see what's possible.

In the most negative case we only need 2 disc's to proof K-probe isn't good enough at the moment. One burned with a older firmware and one burned with the latest. The first one needs not to play back on a X-box Samsung drive and the second one should which will not be a problem with the new firmware. If it shows a difference in tracking or HF signal for disc 1 and a not much higher error rate as disc 2 then we know K-probe is not reliable.

I think it might be interresting to open a new topic or use this topic on the way how we would like to test it just to make sure that everybody will acccept the outcome.
I would also like to test the new UM docter if possible that is just to see how it performs a long with the Lite ON's and the profesional analyzers.

But first we need to find out what is possible and how to do it.

[Sgt_Strider]

bump...any news?

[dolphinius_rex]

I'm still working on a reliable way of doing DVDR reviews, but I won't start doing them until I am satisfied that the results will be useful to a wide range of people, and accurate (or should I say precise) to a certain degree.

still a work in progress, but there has been progress

[Halc]

I've been also doing my tests, but the results are still very inconclusive.

What I can say about CATS CD tester and Plextor (Premium) and LiteON (48246S and 52327S) is as follows:

The modern consumer drives are in many cases (not always!) more tolerant of low level disc failuers (loss of reflectivity, tracking signal variance, eccentricity, etc) than the calibrated CATS drives are.

Discs that CATS just refuses even to scan at the most loose settings can still be scanned both in Plextools and Kprobe using the aforementioned consumer drives.

Some discs that show totally unacceptable (and uncorrectable) error rates on CATS CD analyzer, remain readable on some consumer drives.

So, what's the moral of this story?

I can't think but the old lesson we've all heard before.

The number of errors is a combination of disc and the reader. It's a consequence (of low level disc attributes and the drive's inability to correct for them) not a root cause per se.

Even the CATS analyzer is just a drive. A calibrated and very high quality drive with extra measuring equipment, but drive nonetheless.

My guess is that we will never have an absolute theoretical reference to which to compare, although something like the latest generation CATS scanner (or similar) is always a decent practical reference.

Why? Because many production, pressing and professional companies use them. If one gets certain amount of certain type of errors in CATS scan, then the disc is considered bad and will be rejected.

Also, having tighter tolerances is not necessarily a bad thing (in the testing equipment). If a disc passes the testing equipment it is likelier to also pass a bit older consumer drives (or reading in those drives) and not just the latest and greatest from LiteOn/Plextor/some others.

I have not yet compared KProbe dvd scans with CATS (or other pro scanners), but my guess is that the results would be somewhat similar to that on the CD side.

So, I think KProbe scans can be useful relative indicator of error free reading on certain drives/mechanisms.

If we combine more of these tests (UM Doctor Pro II for Sanyo chipsets, KProbe for LiteOns, hopefully something for Plextors in the future), I'm sure we can conclude somet useful averages / likelihoods about them.

If not, at least we'll all be wiser in the end.

Best regards,
Halcyon

[RJW]

For cd-r's.
Hmm haven't got the Lite On 48246S back but I can say that the Plextor Premium measurements and the interpretation we did befor measureing on the CDA-3000 analyzer at least roughly matches. Bad disc is bad.
Good disc is good. And the best disc's show up as both drives on the best disc's. Since I have some other things on my hands it is put on hold.
As soon as the Lite On returns and I finished up the other things I will make a final report about it.

About CATS and Datarius DVD analyzer vs K-probe.
So far it looks like 70% of the measurements for errors measurements with K-probe match Datarius and CATS analyzers.
12 % of the K-probe measurements was totally off however.
The results so far show no significant difference in errors between Audiodev and Datarius, This is something which would be expected since
both drives use the same optical part and both are based on the ECMA standard.


Newer drives are most tollerant.
The CATS CD tester is supposed to be at the level of a average player when it was released. Now some compannies went way ahead and know made drives that have supperior error correction.
What some drive report as a E32 will be reported by this drives as just a E12. Which is really great.

The point is that the CATS and Datarius analyzers meassure more parameters which are needed and also that

I agree that there is no absolute reference in which we compare.
Still there is a difference between the Pro-analyzers and the drives with software. The profesional analyzers are based on the ECMA standards which also specify how things should be measured and what the limits should be.
For software and drives there is no specification for the construction, procedure and the standards.
That's why we should take in account that these drive are of a much higher quality. Also the calibration of these machines causes a more steady performance. (Which is something some 401S have problems with the 411S and 811S are allready performing a lot better)

Also take in account pro-analyzer meassure more as errors. But I allready said that one befor.

Now every new tool and extra support is welcome. Like Halc allready said the more drives and tools the better we can set standards.

But so far just K-probe error measurements are not complete for a fair judgement when it comes to good playback and writing quality of the media. Since Lite On drives seem to be tollerant for high jitter !
(If all other drives were like Pioneer a06/Plextor 708 or Sony DRU 510(which are even better) it wouldn't be a problem fact is that Lite On is to much above average !)